Should I Leverage Debt to Speed My Business Growth?

Summary

Summary of "Should I Leverage Debt to Speed My Business Growth?"

The EntreLeadership Podcast hosted by Dave Ramsey delves into the critical decision-making process surrounding the use of debt for accelerating business growth. In this episode, released on April 21, 2025, Ramsey addresses real-life business challenges faced by entrepreneurs, offering seasoned advice drawn from his extensive experience. The episode primarily features two callers, Joe and Charisse, who seek guidance on leveraging debt to expand their businesses, followed by insightful discussions on customer experience with guest Elizabeth.

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1. Joe’s Chicken Sandwich Empire: Balancing Growth and Debt

Background: Joe, a Chicago-based entrepreneur, shares his impressive journey of growing a single chicken sandwich shop into a thriving chain of nine restaurants with 158 employees, culminating in a revenue of $12.9 million last year (01:00). His audacious goal is to expand to 75 restaurants within the next decade.

Challenges: Despite steady growth, Joe's reinvestment strategy limits him to opening only 1-2 new locations annually. His attempts to secure bank debt or lines of credit have stalled, primarily because the restaurant business lacks substantial assets for collateral, making banks hesitant to lend (02:58).

Discussion: Dave Ramsey explores the feasibility of leveraging debt to accelerate Joe's expansion:

• Risk Assessment: Ramsey emphasizes that increasing debt amplifies business risks. He warns that while debt can accelerate growth, it also heightens the probability of financial strain, potentially jeopardizing the entire venture (04:33).

• Finite vs. Infinite Games: Drawing from Simon Sinek's concept, Ramsey differentiates between finite games (with clear endpoints, like Joe’s goal to sell at $25 million EBITDA) and infinite games (ongoing operations). He suggests that debt is more perilous in finite contexts where the end goal can magnify the consequences of financial missteps (09:12).

Advice: Ramsey advises Joe to focus on organic growth through cash flow rather than seeking external debt. He underscores the importance of maintaining financial stability and minimizing risk to ensure the longevity and sustainability of the business (05:30).

Notable Quote:

“The more debt you have, the more risk you have. Risk equals the thing hits the wall and the car is destroyed and you don't finish the race.” — Dave Ramsey (07:21)

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2. Charisse’s Child Care Venture: Navigating Debt and Expansion Failures

Background: Charisse, a child care center owner, discusses her attempt to expand her business by opening a second location. Despite having a stable first location with $580,000 in revenue and $230,000 in profit, unforeseen challenges led to significant debt accumulation (14:49).

Challenges: Charisse's expansion was plagued by:

• Budget Overruns: Initial renovations exceeded the $250,000 budget due to delayed permits and contractor fraud, ballooning costs to over $500,000 (16:09).

• Debt Entrapment: Incurred hefty debts from SBA loans, which were personally guaranteed but left her financially vulnerable when the expansion failed (16:28).

• Lease Obligations: Unable to open the second location, Charisse grappled with renegotiating leases, adding to her financial strain (16:58).

Discussion: Ramsey provides a candid analysis of Charisse’s predicament:

• Asset Liquidation: He suggests selling her home, which holds minimal equity, to settle debts, emphasizing the need to prioritize financial obligations over personal assets (19:43).

• Debt Aversion: Ramsey strongly advises against taking on debt for expansion, highlighting how it magnifies business mistakes and personal financial risks (22:34).

• Bankruptcy Consideration: While not advocating for bankruptcy, Ramsey outlines the grim realities of debt-induced business failure, urging Charisse to seek settlements and focus on her profitable first location (21:07).

Advice: Ramsey recommends that Charisse sell non-essential assets, negotiate debt terms with the SBA, and refocus on her successful first location to rebuild financial stability. He underscores the importance of avoiding future debt and learning from past mistakes to ensure business longevity (20:01).

Notable Quote:

“Debt magnifies our mistakes. And there's only one thing I'm sure about business. You're going to make a lot of mistakes.” — Dave Ramsey (25:31)

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3. Lessons Learned: The Double-Edged Sword of Debt in Business

Throughout the discussions with Joe and Charisse, Ramsey underscores a central theme: Debt is a double-edged sword that can either propel a business forward or lead to its downfall. Key takeaways include:

• Risk Management: Debt increases financial risk, making businesses more vulnerable to market fluctuations and operational hiccups.

• Sustainable Growth: Organic growth through reinvested profits, while slower, ensures a more stable and sustainable business model.

• Mindset Shift: Entrepreneurs must prioritize financial prudence over rapid expansion, recognizing that debt can significantly amplify both successes and failures.

Notable Quote:

“If you borrow money into it, you get to pay payments on your stupidity. It just hurts, y'all.” — Dave Ramsey (25:31)

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4. Guest Insight: Elizabeth on Crafting Exceptional Customer Experiences

In addition to caller segments, the episode features Elizabeth, CEO of Trilith Foundation and founder of Slumber Sleepwear, who shares her expertise on building a stellar customer experience, drawing from her two decades at Chick-fil-A (27:45).

Key Points:

• Consistency: Maintaining a consistent customer experience across all locations is paramount. This consistency stems from a strong organizational culture and empowered local operators who embody the company’s values (29:51).

• Employee Empowerment: Allowing employees the autonomy to “surprise and delight” customers fosters a positive environment and enhances customer loyalty. An anecdote about Chick-fil-A employees going the extra mile to find a lost wedding band exemplifies this ethos (32:35).

• Continuous Improvement: Regularly assessing and refining customer interaction processes ensures that the business remains responsive to customer needs and market changes (35:42).

Notable Quote:

“Excellence happens in the details. Like, the more excellent that we want to become, we have to go deeper and deeper and deeper into the details.” — Elizabeth (36:11)

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5. Final Takeaways: Navigating Debt and Prioritizing Core Values

Dave Ramsey concludes the episode by reiterating the perils of leveraging debt for business expansion. He shares personal reflections on how debt has magnified his own business mistakes and emphasizes the importance of prioritizing financial health over aggressive growth strategies. Ramsey encourages entrepreneurs to embrace prudent financial practices, learn from errors, and focus on building sustainable, debt-free businesses.

Final Notable Quote:

“Debt magnifies your errors. And you don't see the mistakes coming. If you did, you wouldn't do them.” — Dave Ramsey (57:38)

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Conclusion

This episode of The EntreLeadership Podcast serves as a compelling exploration of the intricate balance between debt and business growth. Through the real-life stories of Joe and Charisse, complemented by Elizabeth’s insights on customer experience, listeners gain a multifaceted understanding of the risks and rewards associated with leveraging debt. Dave Ramsey’s pragmatic advice underscores the importance of financial discipline, sustainable growth, and the cultivation of a strong organizational culture to navigate the complexities of business expansion successfully.

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Note: Timestamps correspond to the sections in the transcript provided and are indicative of when the quotes occur within the episode.

Transcript

[Dave Ramsey]

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the entree leadership podcast, where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. If you want to submit a question, go to entreeleadership.com ask or leave us a voicemail at 844-944-1070, and we'll make you a caller on the show. That's 844-944-1070. Joe is with us, and Joe's in Chicago. Hi, Joe. Welcome to the show.

[Joe]

Hey, Dave. I am such a huge entree leadership fan of everything you guys do, so thank you to you and your team for rocking it out. Thanks for having me on the show, hon.

[Dave Ramsey]

Thanks for being with us. How can we help?

[Joe]

So my name's Joe. I'm in Chicago. In 2017, I started a small chicken sandwich shop with a bucket of paint. We did it very modestly with $63,000. And fast forward to today. We've got nine restaurants, have 158 employees, and we just finished last year at $12.9 million.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good for you. Wow. Congratulations.

[Joe]

Thank you so much. So my question is, and it's around my audacious goal to open up 75 restaurants in the next 10 years. And what I've learned. And we've just keep dumping all of our cash back into the business, reinvesting it. Our cash flow only allows us right now to open up about one to two stores a year. And I know that will wait a minute.

[Dave Ramsey]

You've got 15. Since 2017, we have nine stores.

[Joe]

I'm working on my tenth one right now.

[Elizabeth]

Oh.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, no. It's 158 team members. I'm sorry. I got.

[Joe]

Yeah, 150.

[Dave Ramsey]

You have nine stores now.

[Joe]

Yep, that's correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Joe]

Operating seven days a week. We're working on our tenth one right now. I'm actually sitting in it on a vacant restaurant. But our cash flow really only allows us to open about two restaurants a year. We've tried to leverage a good relationship with our bank, our local bank, to do some bank debt, to kind of use some line of credits. We've kind of realized, like, with the restaurant business not having a lot of assets, that we cannot use bank debt, they just won't let us grow. So my question is, how and what vehicle should we use to open up these 75 restaurants to hit my audacious goal for the next 10 years?

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Are you buying the real estate in each location?

[Joe]

So we own four of the buildings right now. So yes and no.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, I mean when you say you're cash flowing 2 a year, does that include the purchase of real estate or just doing leasehold build out?

[Joe]

So preferably it will be leasehold build out. But we do own four of the buildings now.

[Dave Ramsey]

So we have, I mean your plan going forward are mainly going to be leasehold build out.

[Joe]

Yeah, the plan going forward is going to be leasehold.

[Dave Ramsey]

You have $13 million in revenue and you can only afford to do two build outs a year. You don't have any margin.

[Joe]

We're about 10%. We were 12% profitable last year. So we do have some cash.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's it take to build out one?

[Joe]

We're at about 300 to $500,000 a year. I mean, I'm sorry, 300 to 500K, the open one.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So yeah. All right. Well obviously the more of them you have open, the more the cash, the more cash you have coming in, assuming they're all profitable. And so I mean if you had 20, if you had 18 open instead of nine open, you would be able to open four instead of two, correct?

[Joe]

Sure, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So in other words, it snowballs in your favor as it gets bigger. So you would borrow money to do the build outs and accelerate beyond your cash capacity, accelerate your growth. That's the idea, correct?

[Joe]

Yeah, that is the idea.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. Well, yeah, banks are not. The problem is that the leasehold improvements have no value in terms of collateral. So that it does make sense that they're not willing to do that.

[Joe]

And we have.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, I don't. You know, you probably already know, I don't borrow money.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I don't teach people to borrow money. I'm trying to get my head around exactly what all you're considering here to try to come up with some kind of an alternative. So the goal that you have is beyond your cash. And so it might as well instead of 75 restaurants, it might as well be 750.

[Joe]

Yes, correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean it's the same thing. If it works for 75, it'll work for 750. And if borrowing into it will work for 75, it'll work for750. So my point is, as you pull this number of 75 out of your ear, it didn't come from anything other than just sounded like a great thing to do.

[Joe]

Well, a part of it was really around the 25 million EBITDA mark. And at 25 million EBITDA I really feel like we have a huge asset on our hands that is sellable, that we can really take care of our team. And then I started working backwards. I'm like, well, how do we get to 25 million EBITDA? And then I started looking at, okay, if we had 75 stores and we.

[Dave Ramsey]

Were 50% profitable, are you, is your end goal then to sell it?

[Joe]

Our end goal is to sell it, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And chicken restaurants don't sell until you get to 25 million EBITDA.

[Joe]

Well, we would have a, at 5 million EBITDA, we would have a line of people. But I feel like when you get to 25 million, it allows for the company to go public. It allows, there's just so many more options for us to kind of, you know, go to the moon and back with that. A big part of our business too is I really want to grow our company so we can grow our people. And there's a key, you know, it's been seven, eight years now and there's been a few key players that have helped me get here and I would love to set up retirement for them and get them, you know, cashed out. So a dream come true is when, if we are able to sell the company one day is I can, you know, really take care of our team with, you know, life changing checks, essentially kind of a light at the end of the tunnel.

[Dave Ramsey]

Here's the equation that's bothering me and so I'm learning from you. I appreciate the numbers and you didn't pull that out of your ear. I retract my statement. You actually had a plan, so I stand corrected. The thing that's bothering me is the more debt you have, the more risk you have. And risk equals that. I don't get to finish the game. Risk equals the thing hits the wall and the car is destroyed and you don't finish the race. That's risk. And the more debt you take, the higher that probability sustainability is increased dramatically sitting where you're sitting right now with zero debt. And so what I'm more, I'm more concerned with you living your dream slower and your dream completing than I am you living your dream faster and let's lower the probability of a completion and getting across the finish line. And so, you know, it might be that it takes a little time, a little bit more time than you initially anticipated to get there. But by cash flowing it the difference in our operation is it's not for sale under any circumstances. It's a generational operation. And so it Changes the games. My friend Simon Sinek wrote a book called the Infinite Game. And when you're playing a game that has a set of rules with a set ending, which is what yours is, you play the game differently than you play if there's no end. Ours is running in perpetuation. And so the debt free idea becomes way more important in my situation than it is in yours. You follow me?

[Joe]

Oh, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because you're playing a finite game. You've got a very specific end to this. Not necessarily a time frame, but a set of numbers. And we have an exit planned already. And so it's somewhere between 5 and 25 EBITDA. And we might get more bang for our buck if we run it on up, but we might also get out while the getting's good at 12. So, you know, and you might make a huge pile of money and have still hit all of your wildest dreams, but, you know, so the thing that you're not considering in the language that you're using, it doesn't sound like you're considering that the more debt you add, the more risk you add. It feels like you feel like that there's no downside to borrowing up to my eyeballs to run these 75 up.

[Joe]

Well, the way I was thinking about it is really, each restaurant could be responsible for its own debt. So if we take 300.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, it's not because they're not going to loan that restaurant money.

[Joe]

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And even a JV or somebody comes in, they're not going to do that. They're going to package it because they're not big enough businesses to stand alone. They're not credit worthy as an individual store. And so again, you're not going to be able to bank that. But even if you could, I'm going to urge you to just slow down, do this a little bit slower and let it cash flow. You'll be amazed about how quickly you get there if you're not giving the bank some of your cash. Because, you know, we started from nothing on a card table in my living room 32 years ago. I'm sitting in a building. Building is 650 million. I paid cash for it.

[Joe]

Wow.

[Dave Ramsey]

But it, you know, it's 30 freaking years. I mean, I'm not. This is not 30 months. Okay? And so it's. And there, you know, but when Covid hit, I was not worried about my landlord or my bank foreclosing because I'm both and I'm fairly friendly to me. So, you know, so I always urge entree leaders when I'm speaking to them to have their face on the COVID of Slow Company magazine, not Fast Company magazine. It's not sexy. But you do get to finish the race. And I would rather finish the race with a bronze medal than come up limping and not finish at all. And so I'm more willing to go slow and steady and be the tortoise, not the hare. And I don't think you're going to do that. But I just, I'm not wired to answer your question. Well, because I don't believe it's what's best for you. So I'm going to beg you to cash flow this and grow it as you can, as fast as you can. And I'm fine living on beans and rice and throwing it all back into the restaurant. I've done that. I cash flowed every bit of this. And that means the money didn't go home. So, you know, that's the angle I'm going to take on the thing. So hey, thank you sir. Give you some things to think about. You just taught me some things about the chicken business I didn't know. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast.

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[Dave Ramsey]

Business in 2025, then you got to grow as a leader. That's why almost 3,000 small business leaders have already RSVP to attend the Entree Leadership Summit this May 18 through 21. The Leadership Conference is the place leaders like you come to learn how to scale from the world's top business experts. We are running out of seats. There's just a couple left. Platinum tickets are already gone. Preferred seats are gone. The standard section is filling up fast. If you're ready to scale your business with us, you need to get your tickets now. Come on over and join us at the Summit in Denver, Colorado this spring. Or go to entreeleadership.comsummit and that'll get your tickets for you. That's the way to do it. And if you're listening on YouTube or podcast, just click the show notes. We'll get you going. Sharee is with us in Los Angeles. Hi, Charisse. Welcome to the entre podcast.

[Charisse]

Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Charisse]

So I am a child care owner. Currently I have about eight employees. Last year we our revenue was about 580,000. I was in the process of expanding, opening up my second location. Unfortunately, I ran out of money and created quite a bit of debt for myself. And my question is, how can I save my business without filing for bankruptcy?

[Dave Ramsey]

So the other location is not open because you weren't able to complete it. What happened?

[Charisse]

Well, I pretty much just ran out of money. The building. I had to do a CU p on the building. Unfortunately, it took over a year to complete. In the midst of that, when I started renovations, the city did not release the permits on time. Started renovations, did demo. The contractor stole about $30,000 from me. The new bids came in at a little over half a million dollars, which initially I budgeted 250, but at that point of having the permits released, I was already at 200,000. So I was already quite a bit over my budget and I decided that I.

[Dave Ramsey]

So your budget was unrealistic?

[Charisse]

It was. Well, because I'm. It was a new area for me also. And my first location, I never did a build out. It was already a child care center. So I was able to just go in and do minor renovations, spending maybe like 40 to 50,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Where did the 250,000 cash come from? You borrowed it?

[Charisse]

I did.

[Dave Ramsey]

From the SBA Lord Jesus. Okay. And I assume they have a lien on your home?

[Charisse]

No, there's no liens.

[Dave Ramsey]

There's no liens.

[Charisse]

I mean, I'm paying the. I'm paying on them every month.

[Dave Ramsey]

So what does. Is there any way we can scratch and claw and finish the other location and get it open?

[Charisse]

There is no way for me to open it. I am also in the process. I told the landlord, unfortunately, because I can't get any additional money, any more lending, so I reached out to the landlord and let him know that, unfortunately, I'm going to have to walk away from the lease. And so I'm currently negotiating that with a lawyer trying to break the lease, but they do not want to let me out of the lease until he can find a new renter.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And the building is in disarray, I assume?

[Charisse]

Yes, it's one. It's a historical building, and it needed quite a bit of work. We had to do plumbing, adding bathrooms, kitchens, the full playground. It's pretty intense.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay. And so the other location is. What kind of money does it make?

[Charisse]

So last year we bought in about 580.

[Mikhail]

The.

[Dave Ramsey]

The.

[Charisse]

It's. It's pretty consistent. The reason that I was trying to expand is because I can't have any more kids. I'm. I'm maxed out at that location.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. What's the profit on your 580?

[Charisse]

It's about 230,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And so you put 230. You pay taxes on 230,000 on that location?

[Charisse]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And the SBA is personally guaranteed?

[Charisse]

Yes, of course.

[Dave Ramsey]

They always are. So what do you live on? What does it take you to live? What's the minimum? Your household budget can exist on about.

[Charisse]

About 10,000amonth.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're single?

[Charisse]

Yes, I am.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you need $120,000 to live?

[Charisse]

My mortgage is pretty high here in California, so. Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you owe on your home?

[Charisse]

Actually, I just bought it, so I owe about 600.

[Dave Ramsey]

Bill, what would it bring?

[Charisse]

What do you mean?

[Dave Ramsey]

If you sold it, what would it bring?

[Charisse]

Right now it's only showing a value of about 48,000. So nothing. It's. It's in a new development. Develop. The development is not closed out yet.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, that's not what I asked. You're living in it, right?

[Charisse]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

If you put a sign in the yard, how much would the price be?

[Charisse]

About 7. Probably about 750.

[Dave Ramsey]

So only a couple thousand yards and you owe what, 600?

[Charisse]

It's a little over 600.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sell it. Use the money and settle with the SBA and keep your life.

[Charisse]

But it's not a lot of value in the home yet.

[Dave Ramsey]

If you sell it for 750. And you owe 600, that's 150,000 minus expenses. You're going to put 100,000 in your pocket and you use 100,000 and you go to the SBA and go, you people are screwed. I'm getting ready to file bankruptcy. I'll give you 100.

[Charisse]

Okay?

[Dave Ramsey]

And you start working a settlement with them and. Or you throw the money at the SBA loan and then you use your $250,000 income while you go rent yourself a one bedroom apartment and you get this thing cleared up. And don't lose your business. This business you currently have, the first one is very valuable. Don't lose that to your stubborn pride over a freaking house.

[Charisse]

Okay?

[Dave Ramsey]

It's a very valuable asset. You're a single lady that has a $580,000 gross. That's netting or 250. You can rebuild with those numbers, kiddo, you can do a lot of things over five years with those numbers, but you got to get this monkey off your back, and it's a freaking gorilla.

[Charisse]

So how would I file bankruptcy without.

[Dave Ramsey]

You don't file bankruptcy.

[Charisse]

Oh, okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

You sell your house, you take the 100,000 and your cash flow and you negotiate something with the SBA and get rid of them. And now you're sitting free and clear in a one bedroom apartment and you make $250,000 a year and you rebuild your life and you go, oh, next time I get ready to expand, I probably won't.

[Charisse]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I certainly won't do it with debt again, will we?

[Charisse]

Oh, absolutely not. Worst decision ever.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you've learned your lesson. You stepped out. You got way out over your skis and the SBA pushed you over.

[Charisse]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

If you'd done this with cash, it would suck, but you'd be okay. But instead, now you've got the. You've got the mistake. And now you got to write payments, checks for the mistake. Ouch. Really hurts. I'm hurting for you. I've been where you are. It's no fun, but you got out over your skis. You bit off more than you can chew, as they say, Right?

[Charisse]

Absolutely.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You were way past your competency, past your knowledge base when you went into this. And the SBA financed that. And that's why the SBA sucks. People ought to stay away from them. They're idiots. And so this loan should have never been made. You weren't bankable. They should not have made this loan because you weren't competent to do what you were trying to do. And they should have Sniffed that out if they were good bankers. And I'm not picking on you. I'm not competent to do a lot of things, but you don't finance stuff I'm not competent to do. So that doubles down on the pain. So, yeah, you dump your house and you restart and you use that money and your wonderful cash flow out of your other business to survive and turn the corner on this. And you negotiate your way out of this lease in the process. Yeah, continue to work on that.

[Charisse]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Because I think that's your two things hovering over your head. The two knife over your head is the SBA and the lease. But you get those things done and you use some of the cash from the house to do that. Oh, by the way, we also got rid of the high payment that you can't afford right now. Cause you're broke, right? Yeah. And so this is painful, kid. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to tell you all this mean stuff, but I love you and I want you to turn the corner on this because filing bankruptcy, you're gonna. I don't know what your homestead exemption is in California, but you're probably gonna lose the house anyway. Cause you probably got enough equity that they're gonna pull it. And you'd have to talk to your Chapter 7 bankruptcy attorney to find that. Or you can look it up online, which. The homestead exemption in California, I don't know off the top of my head, but. And you're probably gonna lose the business, which make. You know, they're not gonna let you keep something that makes $250,000 a year and them not get paid. That's not how bankruptcy works. All the assets go to the middle of the table, they offset the liabilities, and whatever doesn't clear, they get zero on. But you also walk out with zero. And so this is a very complicated. I mean, you can put it in a chapter 11, but it's not going to solve your problem because you still got this crap hanging over your head and you're trying to hang on to too many different things. If I'm you, I'm cutting bait on the house and then I'm going to play hardball with the landlord and just go, I'm not paying you. So good luck with that and call me and we'll talk about how I'm not going to pay you because I can't pay you. I don't have any money. And they call the SBA and go, okay, what can we settle for pennies on the dollar? Because this whole thing Went belly up because you guys made a loan that you should have never made in the first place. And you just about bankrupted me. If I hadn't had my house, you would have bankrupted me and clear it and just bust them in the nose, too. Gosh, honey, I'm sorry. This breaks my heart for you. You worked so hard to get there, and then this one thing flipped you on your head and it's going to take you like 36 months to recover from it. But the good news is the lessons are thorough. I remember them. I learned mine, and I don't borrow money, and I got no use for the SBA in the process. You can tell that? So that's how this works. Wow. Well, I wish I had a magic wand away for you, but mine's a little short on batteries. That's the best I can do to help you. Ouch. This is the Entree podcast.

[Unknown]

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[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Entree Leadership Podcast. I am joined in studio with one of our speakers at this year's summit event. We're going to be up in Denver, Colorado, and it's going to be incredible. May 18th through the 21st. If you haven't gotten your tickets, I'm sorry, you should have. You're not going to get to come now. Maybe there might be a few left. Get in touch with us and we'll try to set it up. One of our speakers is Elizabeth, and she's the CEO of Trilith foundation and the founder and president of Slumber Sleepwear and was a leader in the hospitality and service at Chick Fil? A. She's written two books, the Power of the Customer Experience and the Strength of Purpose. She's going to be talking at Summit about the power of the customer experience, how important it is for the folks on the front line, among others, just to get the idea that the customer not only needs to do a transaction, but have an experience. Right. Welcome.

[Elizabeth]

Thank you.

[Dave Ramsey]

So good to have you. It's great to be here. So how long were you at chick fil? A?

[Elizabeth]

20 years.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, wow. Okay. So you were right in the thick of it as they were actually building what is, you know, an iconic customer experience for sure. To where the all of us that look in from the outside. And of course, we've got at Ramsey, a bunch of connections to the internal group there as well. But just looking from the outside is pretty impressive. And so how did you guys build that and what did you see as the key elements to create that? Because not only did you build it, but it's replicatable.

[Elizabeth]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Where every store that I go in, I get that experience.

[Elizabeth]

Consistency. Well, it started before my time in hospitality at Chick Fil? A. Mark Mortakis was the gentleman who was tasked to really create what we called hospitality. And Dan, who's now chairman, and then Truett, who was our founder, they really thought it was in 2008, when it was a really hard time, they really thought it could be a moment to differentiate. And Hort Schulze, who was a great friend of Chick Fil? A, had said, you know, you guys need to elevate yourselves. He had told Dan at the time, you guys are the best of a lousy lot, basically queen of the pigs. And so it was a chance to say, what if we could use what actually makes us special, which is our people, and differentiate ourselves in this quick service, fast food space. So it was before my time. I came once a lot of it was established.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you were. But you were still the implementation because we got 140,000 team members and you're trying to get them to create a customer experience. What's the magic sauce to doing that?

[Elizabeth]

Well, a lot of the magic comes down to the operator who's running the restaurant. That is the magic. We would have so many companies come and say, what's your training program? Can you just give us the training module? It's like, no. I mean, we can. But it starts way further back with mindset, with culture, with knowing how you truly want to be differentiated. So for Chick Fil A, the local operator model is a huge piece because that operator is setting the culture for that restaurant.

[Dave Ramsey]

So for the small business person listening to us right now, they, the owner, the leader of the organization, it starts with them 100%. And it's not simply buy three books on customer service, make all the people on the front line read them, or watch this video.

[Elizabeth]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

On customer service. All the people on the front line. No, you got to get it inside of you. And then it becomes almost a demand of excellence. All the way down to the front.

[Elizabeth]

Yes. Because you get what you model, create, and allow. Like, you will get in the culture. The things that you model, the things that you intentionally design, incentivize, prioritize, and what you allow, the things you allow to happen. Everyone's going to believe her. Okay?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And under the allow bucket, there's two things. There's things we're not going to allow.

[Elizabeth]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And, you know, if you do that, you don't get to stay.

[Elizabeth]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because that's not who we are. We always say around here, if you want to be a we, this is what we allow. And so that's accountability. Yes, I guess.

[Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And then. But there's also the thing that you guys did a great job of, and I've watched it, and I've heard about it as well, that you gave permission for people to freelance a little bit. On the positive side.

[Elizabeth]

Yes. And a lot of that came from Horst also. So when he started the Ritz Carlton, he allowed $2,000 per employee, or $2,000 per customer, really, per day that they could spend to make something right. And he's been a mentor of mine for years. And I said, horst, what's the most that was spent? Cause I was thinking it'd be like, $2,065. Like someone broke it. He said, no, the most that was ever spent was 800. I said, why'd you make it so high? And he said, two reasons. One, lifetime value of the customer. And he rattled off in the moment. I know my average age of my customer is 40. They're gonna travel with me till they're 80. They spend this much per year. He knew the lifetime value. And then he said, we had to make the limit high enough so that the employees didn't feel like they were gonna get in trouble. And so I knew that that would give him plenty of freedom. I said, what happened with the $800? He said, it was at one of their locations. A couple was on their honeymoon. The husband lost his wedding band in the sand or somewhere. They thought it might be the sand. And they're at dinner and they're bawling, crying. And the server is probably thinking, like, what do I do in this moment? This couple is crying at dinner. And finally the server asked and they said, we lost our wedding band. We were on the beach all day. And that server went out with a few others. They bought two more metal detectors to add to the ones that they had scoured the beach, found the ring.

[Dave Ramsey]

No way.

[Elizabeth]

And presented it at breakfast the next morning. That was the most that was ever spent. But it was a high enough level that makes you.

[Dave Ramsey]

My eyes leak. I mean, that's powerful.

[Elizabeth]

It's powerful.

[Dave Ramsey]

There's a lot of rich stories that are great. That's a great one, though.

[Elizabeth]

Because he created a culture where everyone knew, knew that it was okay. They were allowed to invest money to make things right. Whether the hotel caused the problem in this story, they didn't cause that problem, but they owned it. You know, when. When we can own the wrong, we actually create a bond with people and we can make it right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, it doesn't. And a lot of times it's. The actual cost is very low. Yeah.

[Elizabeth]

But the value.

[Dave Ramsey]

You give away a couple of free sandwiches at Chick Fil, a actual cost of goods sold is not a big deal.

[Elizabeth]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

But the customer impression is 8x or 10x what the actual cost is that you do something to make it right.

[Elizabeth]

100%. But as you know, it starts with a mindset to be able to have that kind of generosity. And it starts with the owner.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes. So what are the top mistakes companies make, particularly small businesses? If we can address those in your mind, with customer service, what's the absolute no. No thing?

[Elizabeth]

Well, I think a big mistake that's often made is not selecting for customer experience. Like not thinking about the selection of people and the team for what kind of experience they want to create.

[Dave Ramsey]

So don't put Eeyore on the front line.

[Elizabeth]

Correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay.

[Elizabeth]

Exactly. But I think a lot of times, especially in smaller businesses, we can get into the season where it's like, just need a warm, semi friendly person who can do a decent job quickly. The urgency overtake. So I think selection is a big piece. I also think onboarding. It's often missed that onboarding. The first, you know, eight hours of someone's New career is focused on. Here's how you clock in and out, and here's where the restrooms are and all of these tasks. But that's the greatest opportunity to align people to vision and mission and purpose, the stuff that's actually going to ignite their heart. So I think that's an easy thing to do. And then another thing is you have to constantly evolve your experience, because the experience is the people. It's the process, it's the place, it's the product. It's really all of that intertwined. And so specifically around the process, how often are the leadership and business owners going through their own process, ordering their own product, registering and seeing where the pain points are so that they can remove those pain points? And that's just a game of moving the bottleneck. You know, you're constantly kind of shifting it, but if you just. If you just set it and forget it and you rest on the design you did five years ago or maybe even five months ago, then there's probably some pain in the process that your customer is experiencing and you can make it better.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's something as simple as go to your own website and try to order something and see how frustrating it is.

[Elizabeth]

100% do it every six months.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, that's just. I have a certain level of anger for this I can't stand. We spent so much money on this, and this is what it does. Yes.

[Elizabeth]

But you have to get that detailed because excellence happens in the details. Like, the more excellent that we want to become, we have to go deeper and deeper and deeper into the details.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm interested to hear the answer to this. You said that you can tell if a restaurant is good when you walk in the door before you sit down.

[Elizabeth]

How it starts in the parking lot, if it's clean. And that was a big thing for Truett. And that's where Dan picked up picking up trash. You know, I was 21 when I took my first trip with him and a group of others, and I watched him start picking up trash. I'm like, what's he doing? Why is. What's happening? Why is he picking up trash? By the third restaurant visit, I was like, I need to pick up trash first. Like, I need to get to that trash before he does. And I asked him, I said, why are you picking up trash? He said, my dad taught me. It's my ticket into the restaurant. I need to find a piece of trash, throw it away, and that's my ticket to get in the restaurant. The details start outside of the restaurant. And then you can tell what's the hustle? What's the feeling of the people? The more emotionally intuitive folks can kind of feel, feel that in a space. What is the feeling of the team behind the counter? Are they hollering at each other? Are they encouraging each other? Like, what is that feeling? And you know, let's see, Theodore Roosevelt said, it's the handshake of the host affects the taste of the roast. So you can sense that in the team dynamic and that's going to impact how your food tastes, maybe perceptually or literally, because they have such a great team dynamic going on behind the scenes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Will Guidera is a friend of mine. He wrote a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. World class restaurateur. And he always says the two most, the two biggest opportunities you have to mess up or to wow someone is from the moment they sit down at the table until something starts happening. Water, food, apps, it's too slow. And from the time you're finished, leave, you know, get, you know, don't, don't rush people out, but be attentive at the end of the meal and give people options. Because how many times are we sitting in a sit down restaurant waiting, yes on check.

[Elizabeth]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

And if I have to ask for it, they're too late.

[Elizabeth]

That's good.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, that's really good because I'm ready to go. Of course, that's my personality style too. But my wife's like, it's okay. No, it's time to go. It's okay, it's okay if I give them my money and now it's time to leave. It's okay. And she's afraid somebody's gonna be offended, but I'm not. So we need to the end of the meal. And the beginning of the meal for him was he said the speed of that, the middle of the meal. Most restaurants, they can get the food out at a sit down situation. They can get the food out to you and they'll check to make sure the water's full during that and all that kind of thing. They'll be attentive during that time. But there's something about the end and the beginning that most people in a sit down mess up. And I think that's true in a lot of businesses. If you're, if you have putting a heat and air system in someone's home, very attentive on the front end to make the sale.

[Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Where's the follow up at the end? Where's the phone call later at the end of the meal? Where's my check? You know, all of that. And I think that's a. That goes with. Is the parking lot clean? To me, that kind of falls in the same bucket in my head.

[Elizabeth]

Yeah. And because those are open spaces that others, you know, competitors are not necessarily filling. And so if you can do something that creates a relationship and a bond in those kind of open blank spaces, you become more memorable than anybody else.

[Dave Ramsey]

How do you create the team alignment to create this customer service to cause this impact to happen? That seems like that is a Herculean lift. Like, it's a Must be a constant flow.

[Elizabeth]

Yeah. I think it starts on that first day of onboarding. Like, what are we about? Like, what are we doing all of this for? And that's what captures hearts and minds. I think it was John Adams that said, people don't relate to orders and direction. They relate to mission and objective. And when we can understand what the mission is that we're after, then suddenly all of the rest of the details start to make sense. But you have to repeat that. Was it mist in the pulpit as a fog in the crowd? Like, you have to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it so that everyone in the organization knows this is what is most important. And I think as leaders, it can be easy to start to talk about all of the other things that need to be fixed and the tactical pieces, but if we're not constantly coming back to purpose and mission and vision, then the alignment just starts to sway and focus on, you know, maybe just what's important right today, not where we're going.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, I think it goes. I wonder if it doesn't go back to one of the other things you said earlier, what you allow. Because if you sanction the opposite by just not addressing it, the opposite of what you're trying to create, then all of a sudden everything will be dumbed down to the slowest.

[Elizabeth]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

To the wrong end of the bell curve. Everything will back down all the way down to that. And it's because you've sanctioned this incompetence. You've sanctioned this by not addressing it, by not holding people accountable to. Look, there's only one way to do it here. Surprise and delight. Yeah, you're not doing that. You're Eeyore, and we don't do Eeyore. I mean, you gotta. You gotta constantly. It sounds like beat the drum.

[Elizabeth]

Yes. Otherwise you get great people stuck behind a bad process and they're. They're constrained. And you've probably been on those phone calls or with those people Before. And you're like, why do I have to do this right now? They're like, well, that, that's our process. Like, we have to. You have to fill that out again. You're like, what?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, why don't you just take care of this and then I don't have.

[Elizabeth]

To think about it. Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because I'm a thing called a customer. Or at least I used to be.

[Elizabeth]

Yes, yes. And a custom has to be at the center. Henry Ford always said, like, it's not the employer that pays the wages, it's the customer that pays the wages. The employer just, you know, navigates the money in between. And if the customer's not at the center, if the customer doesn't have a seat, you know, a proverbial seat at the decision making table of our organizations, then we're not designing with them in mind. And it's the customer obsessed companies that create the company obsess customers when we obsess about what they want, how to remove the bottlenecks, how to make it more seamless for them. You know, those then are the customers that can't imagine their life without us.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's so good. And I like the budget idea. Budgeting a surprise and delight and saying, make them blow their mind. Your job is to blow their mind. I tell our folks all the time that, you know, we exist for the people that are not here. Your job is to make them smile when we get up. I mean, we talk about that in staff meeting every week. Just about to the point. Our folks are tired of hearing it, but they know it. It is what we do. And if you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money. And, you know, that's one of our core values. And so all those kinds of things pour back into the same exact idea that the customer is. The customer's not always right, but they are always in need of service.

[Elizabeth]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so we tolerate people, the customer misbehaving towards us either, that's another thing. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're just talking about someone who innocently walks in trying to give you their money, for goodness sakes. Love them.

[Elizabeth]

Well, yes, exactly.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why is this hard? But it's an intentional act. It does not occur by default.

[Elizabeth]

No, it doesn't.

[Dave Ramsey]

This is so good. Such good information. I love it. We're talking with Elizabeth Dixon. She was with Chick Fil A for many, many years. In the customer service side, Strength of Purpose is one book. The power of the customer experience is another book. You can check them out. And if you are blessed to be one of the attendees at the upcoming Entree Leadership Summit in Denver, May 18th through 21st, you'll get to hear more from Ms. Elizabeth. I'm honored to get to meet you. I look forward to working with you in Denver and in a long future together. Thanks so much. Thanks for stopping by.

[Elizabeth]

Thank you. My pleasure.

[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, guys. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast Platinum. Tickets to Entree Leadership Summit are officially sold out and preferred seats are almost gone, which means you're running out of time to join me and 12 other of America's top leadership experts. And this is the best business conference in 2025. It's gonna be May 18 through 21 in Denver at the fabulous Gaylord Resort. We're gonna unpack the secrets to leveling up so you can transform the way you lead and scale your business like never before. To get your tickets before we run out, go to entreeleadership.com summit or click the link in the show notes if you're listening on YouTube or podcast. So Joe that's going to borrow all the money to open some more chicken stands to get his EBITDA up, needs to meet Charisse, who figured out that plan doesn't work well. It's almost like we planned to put those calls together. We didn't. God did. But it worked out well. And lesson learned, lesson intended. Wow. So, yeah. Although, to be very candid, Joe was not as far over his skis as she was. He's not reaching that far outside of his competency, and she was completely out of her zone. But one of the things we figured out about debt, and we tell entree leaders this all the time. Debt magnifies our mistakes. And there's only one thing I'm sure about business. You're going to make a lot of mistakes. The stupid things I have done in 30 years would fill a book, and it would be a humorous book. They weren't humorous at the time. But were I to read about it from five or 10 years ago or 30 years ago, I laugh about it. There's very few of them that make me cry. They just look at them and I just go, you are a dumb human being. How did you possibly think that was gonna work? And there'd be chapter after chapter after chapter of that. I'm firmly convinced that all of the success I've had in my life with Ramsey and the Ramsey brand has been on about 10% of our ideas. The other 90% sucked, and we survived them. You don't Know us for them because they're deep in a grave somewhere where they belong. But actually, it's a huge pile of garbage is what it is. That's the gleaming mountain of success. It's all the mistakes. You're standing on them instead of laying under them. And when you borrow money, you magnify your errors. So if she had not borrowed money, she would have gone to a smaller, different location that was manageable, done a rehab. Instead of trying to do some historic crap, which is a nightmare. She'd have done it in an area where the permitting was more predictable instead of some nightmare county that's really hard to work with. There's plenty of those out there. And she would have stayed back within her competency. And even then, if she put 100,000 bucks of her own money in it and it didn't work or got halfway through and failed, she wouldn't be looking at bankruptcy or losing her home to pay the thing off. And so, you know, and the same things happens with Joe with his chickens, chicken stands. And so if he goes out there and gets over his skis, you know, and you get just a little bit out of balance, then, you know, you're gonna go down and you're gonna roll, and you're gonna be a snowball with little feet and hands and head sticking out like one of those cartoons, right? And this is what it feels like. And it's no fun. It's no fun. It takes your dream of business ownership and turns it into a nightmare. And it magnifies the mistakes. And you don't see the mistakes coming. If you did, you wouldn't do them. The 90% of our bad ideas that we've survived at Ramsey, at the moment I had the idea, or someone here had the idea, on the walking trail, the running trail, sitting on the back porch with a cup of coffee, wherever the idea occurred, at the moment you have the idea, you think it's awesome. You never have an idea and go, well, that sucks. You always think it's awesome. And then you go, try it. And then it falls on its face, and you go, oh, man, I'm dumber than a rock. I didn't see that coming. And if you borrow money into it, you get to pay payments on your stupidity. It just hurts, y'all. So I know it's no shock to hear Dave Ramsey ranting that debt is bad. That's not a big. That's not an insight for any of you guys, but it's magnified, and it shows up in business. And in business we feel like our ideas are all smart. And I'm just here to remind you it's not. The three rules of business always work. It's going to cost twice as much as you thought, it's going to take twice as long as you thought. And you're not the exception. Those are the three rules, and you just don't get away from them. And so because you don't know what you don't know, it's this unconscious incompetence that we all have. All right. Mikhail is with us in California as well. Hey, Mikhail, what's up in your world?

[Mikhail]

Oh, we're doing well here. Thank you, Dave, for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's going on? How can I help?

[Mikhail]

Well, I'd classify our business as being in peak performer. I run a residential construction company. We grossed about four and a half million last year.

[Dave Ramsey]

Way to go.

[Mikhail]

Yep, did well. We're enjoying that place. But I'm in a place where, you know, and I have been thinking about it for a lot of years, but I really am looking for, to build heritage and I've got older kids. But to be honest with you, I reflect on where you're at and I look at what you've accomplished with your family and I. That's my question. It's like, how do, how does that happen? It's not, it's certainly not magic. And there's certainly a lot of things that are in the background that I'd love to say, okay, that journey was smooth, but it's. I'm sure it wasn't.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, no. Never as smooth as it looks from the outside with the lights on. But the.

[Mikhail]

They want nothing to do with it. But I'd like to know what does it take to maybe encourage that? So what are some things?

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, they don't want anything to do with the construction business.

[Mikhail]

Yeah, they're like construction, dad. We don't want nothing to do with it. And I try to explain to them, you know, dad's not in a truck anymore. I don't, you know, that's not the way it works anymore.

[Dave Ramsey]

So how many kids have he got?

[Mikhail]

I have four.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old are they?

[Mikhail]

28, 26, 22. And we were foster care for a while, so I have a 12 year old.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, and what do they do for a living?

[Mikhail]

28 year old, just got his master's degree in accounting. He's in Virginia. And there's no interest in the business. He likes where he's at. 20, 26 year old is a behavioral therapist down in Southern California. He's got a lot of aptitude and possibility. There's a lot of unique ability there, but he's not interested. 22 year old, she's a rock star. She's just graduating from Biola with a degree in public. I'm sorry. Yeah, some communications. I'm blanking right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's okay. She's a degree in communications. All right. What's she going to do with her life?

[Mikhail]

She's actually wanting to go work for focus. And so we'll see. She may able to do that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Mikhail]

And I'm, I'm approaching the point where I'm going, okay, how much longer do I want to do this? And I'm enjoying myself now, but as I listen to you and I realize succession doesn't happen overnight. You know, you're talking about 10, 15 years from now. And so I'm, I'll admit I have to deal with the anxiety of going, okay, should I get started? You know, and.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, you don't have, you don't have anyone that wants to run or own this business in the family.

[Mikhail]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so you can't, you can't manufacture that. And if. So if you take a behavioral therapist and an accountant and force them into the construction business on whatever, manipulation or whatever, if they just showed up and did it because you asked them to, they'll be miserable.

[Mikhail]

True.

[Dave Ramsey]

They don't want to do it. So that's not succession. I mean, the kids that are involved here, they want to be here. It's like they enjoy what we do. And Rachel enjoys being on the stage, on the air, and is in her zone. It's in her gifts. And my son Daniel's wired a lot like me entrepreneurially. So he loves this. I mean, we had lunch today talking about how much he loves it. But you don't want to have them come in and be miserable. No, that's not. So I think you're looking at some other type of exit to where a non family member is your succession plan and buys you out as you head towards retirement. Maybe one of your senior people or a couple of your senior people or something like that.

[Mikhail]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old are you?

[Mikhail]

I'm only 52.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Mikhail]

I got plenty of time.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So I'm going to start watching for. Because I think the best heritage feature is to hand it to somebody from within the business. Obviously you could sell it to someone on the outside and that would be. Usually a competitor would come in and would love to have the, you know, your book of business, so to speak, and they'd probably be willing to pay a lot for it at some point. You're not there today, but that can be. And that's a reasonable exit if you don't have any family members that want anything to do with it. So. But it is.

[Mikhail]

At what point in time did your kids connect with or did you connect with the ones that are involved in the business that that's something that they wanted, that's something they liked? Was it always that way or was there a turning point?

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, the first thing was if they were going to work around the business, growing up in their teens and so forth, they had to work twice as hard as everybody else to be respected. And we told them that. So they were more like coaches, kids. They got the crud beat out of them. We made it hard. And then we said, do not come to work here unless you feel called to it, because it's too hard to do family business if you're not called to it, if you're not excited about it. And so, you know, different ones. Daniel considered not coming, and there's a story behind that. And then as he's coming out of college, some of his other mentors, not me, said, you'd be crazy not to look at this because it does fit your skill set. It does fit your. And I mean, it does fit your spiritual bent. And so he felt like, okay, all right, I think I can come in here. And he overcame the things he had in his head that were blocking him. So anyway. But that's him coming straight out of college into here. Rachel came straight out of college into here. My oldest daughter runs our family foundation, technically doesn't work here, although her offices are out of here. And she worked for a different place for a long time. And when I asked her to come run brand new, that I was just forming Family foundation about 15 years ago, she said no. She said she didn't want to. She enjoyed working where she was. And about a year later, I'm still struggling along with the thing. And she said, I think I've changed my mind. I think God is releasing me from this other place and I think I'm okay to come over there. So she initially didn't to enter into that. And so I don't know, I think you can say, guys, what I would probably do. Yours are further along than ours were, in other words. And so, number one, I don't want you to come if you're miserable. I don't want you to come to make me happy. But I do want you to realize there is an opportunity here. And this is a large, very profitable business. And before I sell it to someone outside the family, I would want to make sure that any of you that want it would consider it. And that would just be a Christmas time, you know, family discussion around the table and go, guys, I love you whether you come here or not, whether you work here or not, and don't come and make yourself miserable to make me happy. That's not going to make me happy. I don't want to curse my children, but I do have a really quality asset here, and I don't want to just hand off all of my hard work to someone outside my family when I first have the opportunity to bless my children. If one of you wanted to come in and run this thing, but if all of you say no, I'm going to begin the process now of looking for the replacement and groom them over the next decade or so, and I'm going to go ahead and tell you that now. So, I mean, you know, it's.

[Mikhail]

I consider all of us have a mindset change. I don't know about you, but I've had multiple mindset changes as I've gotten older. And I look back and I go, I'm. I'm actually running this business and doing things. I never thought I'd get to this place. And I just would hate for them to wake up a decade, 20 years later and go, man, I let dad sell that. What was I thinking?

[Dave Ramsey]

Just, you know, I think, I think you say that out loud.

[Mikhail]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you say, you know, you may wake up and say, I want to run my own business and not be an accountant. You may wake up and say, I'm going to use my psychological training to lead people and run a business. You may wake up and say that. And I don't want you. If you don't, it's fine. And if you never come, it's fine. Please don't come to just make me happy. But I also don't want to and then just say what you just said. Lay it out there. I think some of these things, if you just. And I don't mind putting it in front of the whole group. You know, everybody's home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever. And, you know, I just want to let you know, guys, this is not a. I'm not out here swinging a hammer. I don't. I don't touch a saw, okay? This is what we're doing. I'm running a business, and the people that work for me do. And the thing makes a lot of money. And. And I would hate for you all to miss the opportunity if you think. Thought you might, you know, and it's okay, you know, if you don't, you can just say so. And it won't. It's not going to kill me. But I also, I want to say this out loud to get the air cleared on it because I don't want you to look back and have regrets and I don't want to feel like I didn't give you every opportunity. So I'm giving you every opportunity now because I'm going to start in three weeks on a different plan if all of you tell me no. And that's fine, you know, and that's. Yeah, but at least you've done what you can do then. But I don't think you want to put any more pressure than that to bring them in. Because the people that I meet that are in a business to fulfill their daddy's dreams are miserable.

[Mikhail]

I don't want that. I don't.

[Dave Ramsey]

Miserable. And they suck at running the thing.

[Mikhail]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

They just.

[Mikhail]

They can be a mess out of it and. Yeah, that would break my heart.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And it makes them. And it makes a mess of their life. So you hurt your business and you hurt them and both two things that you cared about, you know, so you just don't go there. That's not a plan. But yeah, to answer your question about our stuff, we started much earlier making those decisions and so they were. The on ramp was longer because we started earlier. And. But that's okay. It doesn't mean it can't be done. And, you know, if one of them says, I got a 50% chance. Okay, good. Let's. I want you to come over, visit, begin to understand what's going on and to gather more information to decide if the 50% becomes 75 or if it becomes 25. And if they raise their hand partially, they don't have to raise, you know, and you can figure that out. And then at least you got a nibble on the hook and. Or if they just all give you a zero, then it's time to go a different direction for sure. Hey, guys. That puts this particular hour in the books. Remember, better a wary warrior than a quivering critic. This world needs more high quality leaders, so take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Entree leadership podcast.